Papa’s Picks: Natural Wound Care With Honey House Propolis Salve

We buy raw unfiltered honey for a sweetener in tea or desserts, but we also use it for first aid on minor wounds. It has natural antibiotic properties, due to a natural hydrogen peroxide that is slowly released in contact with body fluids. Honey also has a low ph, preventing the growth of bacteria. As a parent, having a good natural antibiotic on the kitchen counter is handy.

Another bee product is propolis, made from resin collected from tree sap and buds. It’s the glue of the hive, but it also (like most things in nature) has a medicinal quality. Trees use sap to protect themselves from fungus and bacterial infections. Bees make propolis from resin, wax, and honey to protect their hive and keep it clean and waterproof.

From Honey Gardens Apiaries:

“Since the beginning, beekeepers have observed that honey bees coat the interior of the hive with this resinous substance. The bees plug holes, waterproof, polish wax cells and hold the hive together with this glue. The healthy hive resists bacterial, fungal, and mold attacks. Honey bees are extremely clean insects.

I have personally seen a mouse skeleton (probably stung to death by the hive) completely encased in propolis, effectively preserving it from bacterial invasion.

I have applied propolis tincture to fresh bleeding cuts (on myself and others) and seen the results. The bleeding immediately stops, the pain abates, and healing begins. The propolis forms a resinous bandage over the wound protecting it from further infection. I have used propolis on warts with results within days. Propolis reduces inflammations of the mucous membranes and cures canker sores, also with amazing and immediate results. Propolis is by no means a cure all for every malady but when it comes to cuts, from my experience, there is no finer first aid.”

For healing burns, scrapes, dry skin and chapped lips, nothing I have tried works better than Honey Gardens Apiaries Honey Propolis Salve. It’s an amazing blend of olive oil, beeswax, honey, propolis, and vitamin E, blended with comfrey root, calendula flowers, and plantain leaves. It has a thicker body to it than most salves, and is not greasy at all. When you apply it, it stays.

I’ve used it for sunburned ears and noses, scratches and scrapes, splinters, burns, and infected wounds. You can apply it to a bleeding wound or a painful blister. I have used it on tattoos (though tattooists generally advise you to not use vitamin E products on new tattoos) and ear piercings. For a cut on my hand that was pusy and hot and not healing, I covered it with a glob of this propolis salve and wrapped some gauze around it. By the next morning, it wasn’t painful or oozing, and it healed up and scabbed over in two days.

We use Boericke and Tafel’s Sssting Stop for treating mosquito bites right after they happen. Our youngest loves to be naked in the garden, and comes out with bites all over her buns, so we put the Sssting Stop on those. If the bites are being scratched to the point of an open sore, we use the Honey Propolis Salve.

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Thanks for sharing. I get our honey from the farmers market (local, raw) but never used it for wounds. Appreciate the tip. And I’ll go check out the website for the salve since I need SOMETHING better than chapstick for my dry lips.